In The House of Flies
by missBAMF
Summary: In This House, when everything about your life is gone and forgotten, there is only one goal left, pleasing the Sir. (This is a very dark piece. Don't read if you're faint hearted)
1. Chapter 1

**A.N. Hello again everyone. No, I know this is not How We Operate, or part 2 of Perdition, but given that Halloween is coming up and I've been watching waaaaay too many horror movies as of late, my muse attacked me about two weeks ago and I just HAD to write this and get it out before it could fester any longer in the pit of my soul. Having said that, I feel I should explain this a bit. **

**Firstly, this story is dark. Extremely dark. Anyone who has read any of my other works knows I don't make that claim lightly. If I ever do publish something officially, one of the genres I'd very much like to go into is the horror/true crime genre. Being a Court Reporter as well as a general lover of horror movies and the true crime shows, it's something that's always interested me and something I am around a lot, and this story is definitely in that category. So, I guess I could say that this is me experimenting with horror and true crime, and in the star trek fandom, which honestly, I'm not sure has really been done yet and I'm all about firsts. If it has been done, please tell me because I'd be interested in reading it! **

**Warnings for this story include extreme violence, non-con, language, and honestly some pretty disturbing situations. If you don't like that, please don't read. I can't stress that enough. I blame the mood of this on the soundtracks I listened to while writing which include, "sinister" "silent hill" and "the others" soundtracks. Be sure to read the AN at the end regarding the future of this one-shot. **

**I want to thank Cate Adams and Rubyhair for encouraging me to post this, and also coccinelle and nightstalker for also reading it and giving me their thoughts. **

**I don't own trek, and I don't own "The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis. **

** In The House of Flies**

He was dreaming, he knew. But this time it was different. Instead of the bleeding, dying people surrounding him, and the endless river of blood pouring out of their bodies that would then taint his bare cold feet, he was dreaming of the man with the light-colored hair again. The man whose skin was never tainted by the color of death, but glowing with the radiance of life; the man who was always dressed in gold, his incandescent blue eyes shining with some unnamed emotion, and that smile that seemed to stretch upward and into the heavens.

That smile that seemed to be just for him.

In this dream, the Vulcan was standing in an obscenely white room with red floors, and a giant expanse of clear glass in front of him that showed the stars in all their brilliancy. In the dream, he seemed to know what stars were; would look at them in awe. The beautiful man was there beside him like before as he looked on with a sense of purpose he did not quite understand. The man grasped him by the shoulder, and started talking to him. Yet, the Vulcan could not hear the words he uttered. He could never hear him, could never put a voice to that perfect, unbroken face no matter how hard he wished he could.

Instead, the Vulcan let his eyes drop to the hand grasping his shoulder.

If he were awake, the touch would not mean what it meant right now, because touching always had the potential to lead to pain; and pain must be avoided. However, this man's touch, he found, was yearned for, craved, and amicable. He did not fear it at all.

There was also something else there, in the touch.

There was a want for more, always for more, but unlike the _more _that the Vulcan was used to in his waking hours, this _more_ was something he thought he had once wanted as well. And then, before he or the apparition in the dream could act, the dream suddenly shifted like he knew it would, and they were now in a room. This room was clean, un-tainted with bodies or blood or darkness, and the bed—an actual bed—he lay on was soft, warm, and welcoming. The blond was lying next to him, his hands carelessly behind his head in support. He was smiling, and looking at him with those eyes…those eyes that promised safety, love, passion. They were words he knew in the dream. Words that the man lying beside him had shown him the true meaning of, but the Vulcan knew he would soon lose the meaning of them once he awoke. He would also lose those eyes. Eyes so unlike the eyes that usually looked at him in his own reality.

He cherished this dream every time he had it. To think that life could ever be like that…

But that was why it was a dream, and dreams were short-lived, as he found out once again when the sound of screaming roused him. There was a time, he thought, when screams like that would give him a start, and perhaps drive him to find the source, to end the screams.

Now though, now he merely lay there on his pallet, and stared blankly at the ceiling above.

Another womanly scream reverberated from the ceiling and filled the dark basement that was his existence, and he knew it was coming from upstairs, most likely from the room directly above him.

The _craft_ room.

The Sir was not akin to utilizing his own bedroom for such acts as the one probably taking place. The Vulcan should know, he had been in both rooms before, and he would be in both rooms again.

When the third scream sounded, he knew it would be the last. He had heard enough screams to know when someone was breathing out their last one. However, the silence that lingered after the fact made him uneasy, and he could not help but sit up on his pallet and stare at the door at the top of the stairwell. It was cold in the basement like it always was. Warmth had no meaning here like it did in his dreams of the golden haired man, and if there had been enough light to see by, he imagined he would be able to see his breath as he exhaled. The furnace was only a few feet away, but he did not like turning it on. He only turned it on when the Sir brought them down here, for him to take care of. Its warmth held little comfort in the face of its real purpose.

The sound of heavy footsteps walking across the hardwood floor upstairs caused the Vulcan to break his focus off of the lighted strip underneath the door, and peer upward toward the ceiling again. He followed the sound of the footsteps all the way across the ceiling, and, to what he suspected, out into the long hallway that existed outside of the craftroom.

_Please, _the Vulcan thought as the beginnings of fear began to take hold_, please stay upstairs._

Immediately following such a thought came a series of sharp pangs in his head, and he folded his forehead into his hands to quell the throbbing. He should not have thought those thoughts. It only brought about the head pain.

He usually did not think such thoughts as it were; such pleadings. But after the dream he had just had, he could not help but yearn to linger in its warmth just a little while longer. To bathe in the…what was the correct word? Oh yes, to bathe in the _hope_ it emanated.

Hope. It seemed like such a wasteful, fantastical word. He errantly wondered if, aside from his dreams, he had hoped before. Before what? He did not know.

When the lighted strip underneath the door went completely dark, signaling that the Sir had decided to retire for the night, he blinked twice, backed his withered, raggedly clothed body into the farthest corner of his pallet, enclosed his arms around his knees and lay there. He closed his eyes, but he could not find sleep. It did not matter how many he had seen, how many he had been forced to take apart and move into the furnace to dispose of; knowing that there was a body up in the room above him, already likely growing cold and still by now, utterly alone and forgotten, ruined any chance of sleep he had had.

((oOo))

The Vulcan did not know how, but eventually he had managed to drift off into an uneasy slumber. This time though, the dreams of the white room with the beautiful man clad in gold standing there beside him; with him; did not return. Instead, he dreamt of the screaming woman he had heard. He had not seen her physically, but his mind obviously did not care, for she was there anyway. It seemed his mind had also decided to envision every scenario in which that screaming might have taken place. He dreamed he held a knife in his hands, and that the woman pleaded with him, was begging him to…to do something, or _not _do something. He was not sure. He didn't _want_ to be sure. He wanted to stop, but he could not. His dreams never listened to him. When he raised the knife the woman closed her eyes, and tears squeezed out from her eyelids. Somehow, he knew that she knew the end had come for her. When the Vulcan brought the blade down, the dream ended.

When he awoke this time, it was not to screams, but instead, to a familiar, heavy weight astride his back, and the laborious breathing of the Sir as he moved against him, working to remove his ragged clothing. A song the Vulcan knew all too well played in the background. This song always played.

Knowing the Sir wished him completely naked; the Vulcan lifted his hips so that the Sir would be able to remove them easier, and would be able to begin sating himself as was the routine.

Gasping with urgency, the Sir maneuvered him roughly into place and without warning, spread his cheeks apart with ice cold fingers, and pushed into him.

If he tried hard enough, the Vulcan almost thought he could remember a time when he would have struggled against this. Fought. But such thinking led to the head pain, so he mustn't think those things.

"Mmmmm…yes…" the Sir panted into his pointed ear as he quickened the pace, effectively pushing him further along the pallet. The pace was brutal and hastened, as it always was, and all the Vulcan could do was clench his pale fists into the cloth beneath him, and squeeze as the pain stabbed at him repeatedly. To do otherwise would bring on the head pain, and he did not want to experience the head pain. It was worse than the Sir's touches, his harsh caresses. The only way to avoid it was to please the Sir. One must always please the Sir.

Soon, soon it would be over. Soon the Sir would find his release, soon that music…the music with the woman singing that despondent melody over and over again would cease, and the Sir would return back upstairs, and he would be alone in his basement once again.

'_Don't they know? It's the end of the world….'_

He had come to hate this music, this song. Anytime it played, bad things happened. He would play it upstairs as well, with the others. The Vulcan had come to intimately know every single word, every musical note.

"Ah yes…so tight…so like new…" the Sir gritted out in that low voice, and gave an expressive thrust, which made the Vulcan beneath him grunt in pain. The Sir moaned in pleasure as a response.

'_Why does my heart go on beating?'_

Why _did_ his heart go on beating when so many others had stopped?

"Moan for me, boy…moan like the whore you are…"

Not thinking twice about it, the Vulcan moaned. He wanted to please the Sir, because then he could avoid the pain. Because that was his purpose.

'_Why do these eyes of mine cry? _

He envied the woman in the song, for having the power to cry. The Vulcan on the floor wanted to cry as well. It would express the emotions trying desperately to make their way to the surface, but he kept his silence. He should not want to cry. He had nothing to cry about. This was all he knew. Why was it so upsetting?

So, he kept his silence. Or, he tried to keep his silence.

Despite his self-discipline, he could not help the small handful of tears that escaped him and trailed down his cheeks. In the back of his head, he could feel the familiar stirrings of the head pain. If he did not rein in his tears; his emotions, it would get worse, and he would struggle and cry out. It had happened long ago, and the Vulcan would avoid it as much as possible.

As the violent penetrations continued, the Vulcan put all his effort into quelling the quiet sobs. Fortunately, the Sir paid no notice to it, not in this darkness. Silently, the Vulcan was relieved by the darkness, for sometimes, the Sir would light the furnace, and if that had happened then his tears would be all the more noticeable.

He was trying so hard, but after every tear, a new one would take the same path, and he felt shame. Why did he continue to cry? What purpose did it serve? What happened to him now, would happen again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after…

'_Don't they know? It's the end of the world…'_

"Yes…fuck yes!" Strong, rough hands gripped his hips tightly as the Sir pushed deeply into him once more, the force of it making the Vulcan cry out. But, this was good, this was what the Sir wished to hear, and therefore the head pain did not come because he had succeeded in pleasing the Sir.

'_It ended when you said goodbye…"_

A moment later he felt a warm, thick sensation spurt into him from the Sir, who with his hands, was lifting the Vulcan's hips up to meet his own in the height of the climax.

The song started replaying just as the Sir finally collapsed against his naked back, his sweat rubbing all over the Vulcan's chilled skin. When he decided to speak, his breath caused goose bumps to erupt all over the Vulcan's shoulder. "Every night, boy. Every night I debate coming down here and slitting your throat, just like that bitch upstairs, but then I look at you, I look at your beautiful skin, this ass made for fucking, and I know, I remember why I keep you, why you're mine. Why I don't do what I should have done so long ago and ended your existence."

'_I can't understand, no I can't understand, why life goes on the way it does,'_

"I keep you because despite what you are, you are beautiful. Whores are not beautiful, but you are. You are different. You are like me."

The Vulcan stayed silent as the tears continued to fall. He had heard all this before, and he would hear it all again. He did not think himself like the Sir, but it was not his place to think for himself anyway.

"You are a special case, unique, one of a kind…"

He wished he was not special, unique, or one of a kind. Perhaps if he were not, he would not be here, in this basement, cold, constantly hungry, alone, and dreaming of a life that did not exist. A life that taunted him with its warmth and a light that never stung his eyes.

But if it was not this basement, it would surely be another one. Dreams were just that; dreams. Reality was reality.

Suddenly the Sir's rough hands were turning him around until he was lying on his sweat-ridden back. He felt the Sir lean forward, and then suddenly a light came on from somewhere beside him, forcing the Vulcan to instinctively shut his eyes to shield himself from the stark pain it caused. Light did not have the effect that it had in his dreams. Light caused pain.

"Open your eyes, boy," the Sir ordered, and instantly the Vulcan complied despite the burning sensation caused from the light.

One must always please the Sir.

The Sir studied him for a moment, his dark eyes cold and calculating as he traced a tear that had managed to trail down the Vulcan's cheek with his finger. The Sir frowned, drew his hand back, and slapped him harshly on the face. It stung, but the Vulcan dared not struggle. Dared not fight.

"Don't you fucking cry in here. You got nothin' to cry about, you deserve this!" the Sir screamed at him, and backhanded him across the face again. His lip felt thick now, and he could feel his blood beginning to trickle down his chin. The Sir was strong, and he certainly felt it in every beating he endured.

But despite the pain, he would endure it in silence.

'_Why does the sun go on shining,'_ the singer sang in that despondent voice.

Every time he heard that lyric, the Vulcan wondered what the sun looked like, hadn't he seen one before? He thought he had…

The Vulcan was abruptly brought out of his musings as the Sir leaned down again and this time, embraced him fiercely. He hugged him tightly to his chest, placed his nose into the crook of the Vulcan's neck, and inhaled deeply. Again, there was a faint hint of an impulse to push him away, but he stomped it down…and endured as the Sir continued to embrace him, and rubbed ministrations into his back. The Vulcan let himself go pliant in the Sir's arms.

"I'm sorry, baby! I shouldn't have hit you like that…" The Sir breathed into his unkempt hair before breaking apart from him. "You've been so good lately…" he went on as he lay him gently back down on the pallet. He then grasped the Vulcan's wet cheeks with his hands and squeezed ever so slightly. "But I told you to stop doing that! You _know_ how angry it makes me! Why can't you just behave! You know it makes me angry when you don't behave! When you fight me like this!" the Sir screamed at him as he squeezed his cheeks with his hands even harder. The ever-increasing pressure was uncomfortable, and the hands were cold, and unfeeling. The Vulcan felt like he should feel something from the contact, something more than just a physical sensation, but it was as if a block had been placed somewhere in his mind. A wall of sorts. Despite having felt those hands in a thousand different ways, the Vulcan could not help but get the feeling every time they touched him that something was missing.

Hands on his face should have feeling, should they not? Not in the tactile sense, but something else…

Something else that was likely never there to begin with.

"Goddamn you! You do this to me! You do! Fuck!" the Sir screamed at him after roughly pushing him back down to get to his feet. The Vulcan wished the light would leave so that the basement would be shrouded in darkness again. It would mean that the expression on the Sir's face would be shrouded in mystery. He did not wish to see the anger on that face. He did not wish to know that he had displeased the Sir so greatly. That he had failed at his one purpose.

"Say something, you fuck!" the Sir screamed again and kicked at the Vulcan's bare feet, catching the bone of his ankle. The Vulcan winced at the newfound pain there, and gathered it close to him. He should be used to this erratic behavior from the Sir. He should know by now how quickly his moods could shift, and thus be prepared to respond to them. However, sometimes it caught him off guard. He was becoming wary of the Sir's anger, and wariness led to fear, which he must keep muted. Yet, he did not know what to say to the Sir's question. What if what he said was wrong? What if it only made the Sir angrier? He only wanted to please the Sir, not anger him. Never anger him.

Before he could make sense of it, the Sir had knelt down, and leaned back in toward him. He brought his hand forward and fisted in the Vulcan's matted hair, effectively bringing his head up until they were nose to nose. It hurt him, but the Vulcan let himself be handled.

"Do you not wish to please me anymore? Have you grown tired of me? Because, you are replaceable. _Boy_," he hissed, sending a cold shiver down the Vulcan's spine. He swallowed, and couldn't resist glancing at the currently cold furnace on the far side of the basement.

Just four days ago he had placed a body in pieces in there. It had been a young man with red hair, blue eyes (since his eyes had still been open in death) and a black object on his face that covered his eyes and hooked over his ears. It had been something the Vulcan suspected the man had used to see through. He had kept the object. Why, he had not and still did not know. He just felt the need to keep a part of the man as he tried to do with everyone that had been brought down into his basement. By doing it, the Vulcan felt that they would be remembered in some small way.

It was a stupid and foolish thought, and a dangerous one at that, but the Vulcan did it anyway. He had hid them with everything else behind a box of rusted old tools just a few feet away. They had been hidden with the drawings he sometimes did.

If the Sir knew he had kept them, or if he knew about the drawings, the punishment would be grave.

Looking at the furnace now, the Vulcan wondered if he would be the next one to go in. To burn in its flame until nothing was left. Until all that he was…was simply gone.

When he realized where he was looking, and that he had let his eyes linger there too long, the Vulcan whipped his head back around to face the Sir, who was smirking at him. His near black eyes bore into the Vulcan's when he spoke. "You think I'm going to put you in there?" he asked gently, but dangerously. "Do you _want_ me to put you in there?" he finished, and it made the Vulcan nervous. However, this was a direct question, and he knew he would have to answer.

"…No Sir, no…" the Vulcan managed, his voice raspy with underuse. It was not often he was asked to speak.

The Sir smiled at him and roughly let him go. The Vulcan fell back to the pallet.

"Then, you do want to please me, right?"

"…" It was a question he should answer in the affirmative, but a small part of him did not want to do so. It was a part of him he thought he had long gotten rid of.

The Sir raised an eyebrow at prolonged silence. "Right?" he furthered dangerously.

"Yes sir," the Vulcan answered instantly. One must always please the Sir. Why was this so difficult to voice?

The Sir smiled again, this time lecherously, turned off the light, and walked over to the far side of the room where he ignited the furnace instead. Instantly the room was bathed in the reddish orange glow of the fire instead of the artificial light that always stung his eyes. The Vulcan resisted the urge to shiver despite the room growing undeniably warmer. He _hated_ that furnace, and he _hated _sleeping next to it. Sometimes late at night, after the Sir had long gone to bed, he could hear voices talking to him from that furnace. They called him things. Things that scared him, which in turn made his head hurt.

_Murderer. Unclean. Filthy. Demon_.

He heard all these things in the night, and all he could do to drown out the sound was bury his head in his tattered pillow and ride it out. Now though, now it was not the voices speaking to him from the furnace; it was the Sir's voice speaking to him from beside the furnace where he had seated himself in the wooden chair that had always been there.

"Come then. Come to Sir and please me. Make me remember why I keep you, why you're special, and…" he paused and indicated the furnace with his eyes. "I won't put you in that furnace," he finished seductively, and undid his pants to bring out his stiff organ. It was not surprising to the Vulcan that he had grown hard again. The Sir had often boasted that his biology allowed him to do so. Whatever that meant.

The Sir pumped the organ in his hand a few times before moaning and fixing the Vulcan with a guttural stare. "Come to me boy. Please me. Show me how much you love me. How much you want to be here with me and nowhere else."

'_Why do the birds go on singing…' _the song played on as the Vulcan mustered the courage to do what was being asked of him. It did not matter how many times he had done this, every time proved to be difficult. Every time felt wrong despite how much it pleased the Sir, which was his entire purpose.

He had seen a creature once; a creature he had never seen before. It had flown into the house through an open window in the Sir's bedroom; a window that was not supposed to have been left open, but the Sir had forgotten about it. For, all the windows that existed in the house had been boarded up; shut.

Except for that window.

That had been before the Vulcan had been forced to spend the majority of his time in the basement he now inhabited. The creature had been injured, its wing had appeared broken, and the Vulcan had tried to save it out of instinct. He had tried to nurse it back to health because he had wanted to; had felt the need to. But a day later the Sir had found him with it, found him attempting to give the creature water from the sink in the bathroom. The creature had been healing, and therefore had had more energy. It had made noises. It had only been logical to the Vulcan to provide the little creature with what it required to grow stronger. He had…_enjoyed_ watching it grow stronger.

However, the Sir had thought differently. He had been so furious at the sight that he ripped the creature from the Vulcan's hands, and crushed its skull with his foot on the floor. Upon seeing the creature's unnecessary death, he had been…_angry_, and then, then the head pain had come. That was why he tried not to be angry, not to act out...It all went back to that head pain.

Somehow, feeling anything at a high level triggered the pain; that pain that made him feel like he was dying. Like he was being ripped apart.

So, it had been logical not to feel anything at all.

It had been logical just to do what had been asked of him. Now though, the logic had faded. It did not play much part the Vulcan's thoughts, his motivations. Now, he did these things because it was all he knew. What else was there? So, given what he had just been requested to do, the Vulcan crawled on all fours, like he knew the Sir preferred, toward the chair.

The Sir gasped in pleasure as the Vulcan took the throbbing organ in his mouth, and threaded his fingers sharply in the black, matted hair. The Vulcan gagged as the Sir pushed his head down on the organ with considerable force, but he continued to suck, his eyes trained on the Sir as was expected of him.

In the end, all that mattered was the Sir.

((oOo))

When the basement door opened again, the Vulcan was already awake, and doing what he usually did when he knew the Sir could come in at any minute; rocking back and forth on his pallet, his head lightly hitting the wall in front of him. It seemed that doing this soothed the constant itch he felt in his mind…an itch he could never quite quell.

He permitted himself to tense as the Sir exhibited an enthusiastic whistle that hurt his ears, and began to journey down the stairs. The sound of something else that was not the Sir's feet thudding against each step, made him shiver. It became obvious what he would be doing today.

"Brought you company, boy," the Sir exclaimed loudly as he carelessly dragged the body of his latest victim down the stairs, the woman he had heard screaming not too long ago.

The Vulcan however, did not turn around despite the presence of the Sir.

"You'll like this one, she was mighty pretty, and a good fuck too," he finished just before coming to stand behind him. "I thought about saving this one, perhaps playing with her a little longer, and you've been good lately, you deserve a playmate…" the Sir went on in amusement. The Vulcan could feel his body heat radiating off of him as he stood behind him. He should turn around and acknowledge the Sir, but he could not bring himself to do so. "But she's not as good as you…none of them are as good as you."

The Vulcan winced at the sound of a skull hitting the cold stone floor with an audible thud. It indicated that the Sir had been pulling her by the hair down the stairs. Hair that would soon be incinerated.

"Hey, you look at me when I speak to you, boy," the Sir said brusquely and turned the small light on that he'd turned on before.

The Vulcan closed his eyes briefly to quell the initial sting before turning from the wall. He caught the eyes of the Sir first; those dark, bottomless pits, and then they traveled downward to the lifeless corpse on the floor; _its_ open eyes glaring right at him. They bore right into his…_katra?_ Was that what it had been called? It felt right in his mind, but he did not know, and it did not matter.

Hot fingers grabbed his chin, and brought it up until he was facing the Sir again. The man smiled lecherously at him as he used the other hand to trace a finger down his cheek. Eventually the digit made its way to his lips until it was being pushed into his mouth. The Vulcan let the digit enter his mouth, and forced himself to close his lips around it so he could suckle the finger. He knew that was what the Sir expected; to not do it would have unfortunate consequences.

When he was satisfied, the Sir retracted his finger and slapped him affectionately on the cheek. "So well trained you are. So…ready to please. I wish I could show you off. Show people what I've molded you into," he cooed, and a thoughtful expression took over his features. It only lasted two seconds though before he abruptly turned, kicked the body on the floor carelessly, switched the light back off, and proceeded back up the stairs.

The Vulcan stared as the door was shut, and waited for the sounds of the lock being engaged before diverting his attention back to the body barely three feet from him.

This one had been young given her smooth skin. Her eyes, which were cold, lifeless, and open, appeared to be green as they stared blankly at him. Her complexion, while pale and creamy, was mottled with the red vibrancy that only blood could produce. Sometimes there were bodies that bled other colors, like green, or yellow, or purple. His own blood was green; he had certainly seen it enough to know. The woman's hair though would remain a mystery, for he could not discern the original color. There was too much blood. Everywhere. On every part of her body was blood. So much blood.

There was always so much blood. He saw more blood than water, which he never got that often anyway.

Willing himself the strength to move, the Vulcan shuffled forward off the dirty pallet and toward the corpse. The Sir would be back, and would expect the body to be gone; disappeared; gone from existence. It was his job to make sure it happened.

Taking a deep breath, he stood up, ignored the sharp pain in his lower half from last night's events, and grabbed the body by her hardened, cold arms. It was difficult, pulling her over toward the furnace because the blood that had crusted over the skin on her arms made grasping them complicated. He managed though, and when he had succeeded in dragging her all the way over, he gently lay her arms back down on the ground. He hated the way the Sir would handle them so roughly, carelessly. He could not explain why, but he felt they deserved more respect than that, and if he could provide that in the midst of solitude, then he would.

With a shuddering breath, the Vulcan turned around, and ignited the furnace. The heated blaze that came out of the front of it made him clench his eyes shut as it assaulted them, making them sting and water. He let his eyelids linger like that for a few seconds before he opened them, and turned back to the dead woman.

He hesitated.

This was the part he hated the most. This was the part that stayed with him at night, when he slept. He would gladly take the Sir's touches over this. He would gladly take the…but then again, he was not sure if he preferred watching the Sir end their lives as opposed to doing this. Both of them were unbearable.

Taking another deep breath, the Vulcan walked toward a small table off to the right where an object rested for this purpose. The blunt hacksaw. It was littered in old bloodstains from previous uses, and the wooden handle was cracked and splintered. But it served its purpose. There was time when he thought he might have tried to use this hacksaw against the Sir, but just thinking about that possibility caused his head to ache fiercely, so he didn't.

Saw in hand, he walked back over to the woman, kneeled down beside her and…hesitated.

Again.

_You will do this. You must, _he told himself—startled at the sound of his inner voice—just as his eyes began to grow moist. No! He could not cry! He could not!

Just as the first tear fell to the floor, and with it, a series of sharp pangs, the Vulcan jerked his free hand up to grasp his left temple in pain. It was not just the sadness egging the head pain on, but also the underlying anger pooling through his system. Anger at yet another unnecessary death. Despite it always being like this, the Vulcan could not help but feel as if her life had been taken, _stolen, _like his...

"Agh!" the Vulcan screamed as another sharp pain assaulted him and he fell forward onto the woman's body, her face becoming buried in his chest. He moaned again as another wave hit him given his dangerous thoughts. _Control! You do not feel! You do not feel anything! _he repeated over and over again to himself while he fought to regain his composure. This happened almost every time he was forced to do this, and he did not understand why. How many times? How many times had he done this? And he still could barely stomach it. He still always questioned it.

Yet, he knew he must. If he did not, the Sir would come back down the stairwell and see his disobedience. The last time he had disobeyed in such a way, the Sir had brought him up to the craft room, stood him over in the corner and chained him to the wall, and then had forced him to watch as he assaulted and eventually took the life of another. He had made sure to make it exceptionally painful, all the while blaming the person's pain on the Vulcan.

_She screams because of you, boy. If you had obeyed me, she would be dead right now, and incapable of feeling this…_

Since that had happened, the Vulcan had made sure to never disobey again. The head pain might not be incentive enough every single time, but that surely had been.

Taking a deep breath, the Vulcan dispelled the memory and positioned the hacksaw on the top of bloodied corpse's thigh. He always started there. Clenching his eyes shut, he began to take the body apart piece by piece. The process all the more difficult given how blunt the hacksaw was.

((oOo))

Some time later found the Vulcan back behind an old desk. It was as far away from the furnace as he could possibly get, and it was where he went after every _burning_. However, it never mattered how far he sat himself away from the bodies that burned in the furnace, he could never escape the smell, or the memory of the sounds the bodies made as he dismembered them with the hacksaw. He could also never help the way his body trembled and shook violently after completing such tasks, or how his head would desperately ache. And he knew that later…he would not be able to stop the nightmares from coming, or the voices from speaking to him out of that furnace like they always did. Day after day.

He longingly hoped, as he sat there with his back against the old desk, that perhaps tonight his dreams would take him back to that expansive white room with the red floors that never seemed to remind him of the blood he was constantly exposed to. He wondered if he would perhaps see the window of…of stars? Instead of that place of pain and death. He hoped that the golden haired man would be there again, his presence a promise of warmth and protection.

But hope and reality were two very different things.

As the light from the furnace flickered across the basement, and caused odd shadows to appear and disappear on the dirty walls, the Vulcan caught the sounds of the Sir walking around upstairs, directly above him. He also caught the sounds of a struggle, and knew without a doubt that the Sir had taken another person into the room with him.

This surprised the Vulcan, because usually there was a lengthy amount of time that would pass before another person was brought to the craft room to be enjoyed by the Sir.

Panic began to surge through the Vulcan as the second individual started to scream. This time, the screams belonged to a male instead of a female, and he wondered if the fire from the furnace would even have time to burn out before the Vulcan was forced to take _him_ apart as well and place him in there he had just done to the woman.

In an attempt to get his panic under control before his head exploded in pain, the Vulcan lifted his hand to his mouth to bite his fist. But just before he actually put it into his mouth, a metallic, thick smell engulfed his senses, and he remembered the blood still on his hands. The Sir had not taken him out of the basement to hose him down yet as he usually did after the bodies had been disposed of.

Instead he was busy on the floor above. Busy taking a life.

Another loud—this time hoarse—scream came from said floor, and the Vulcan slammed his hands over his ears as a result. He could not listen to this. It was too soon. Too soon after the woman. He had had no time to regain his composure. He could not do this again so soon.

Knowing he was starting to lose it, the Vulcan got onto his hands and knees and crawled over to the furthest side of the basement where a litany of boxes rested. The furnace was still burning, so he could just make out their shapes. They were full of useless things; most of them broken, but one of them held a tattered book filled with blank pages that he had found _months? Years?_ Ago. He was not allowed to have it, he was not permitted to have anything, he knew, but he had not been able to bring himself to dispose of it. Nor had he been able to dispose of the old box of small items that produced colors that he'd found there as well.

Instead, he had hidden that book, and the coloring tools in the boxes, and whenever his composure started slipping, whenever the fear became too much, he would draw memories from his dreams; the dreams that had made him feel…different. Safe.

It took him two minutes to find that book, and by the time he'd placed his hands on it, the screaming upstairs had reached an all time high it seemed. It would only be a matter of time before the man's blood began to overwhelm his throat, and the gurgling would take over instead.

Quickly, the Vulcan brought the book out and splayed it open onto the dirty floor where the light could illuminate it the best. The coloring tools he had stashed next to it also came out, and he found himself grabbing the yellow, blue, and tan colored ones. They were the most worn down out of the selection, and nearly past their usefulness, but they still had use enough left for this one picture.

Skimming past the older, previous drawings he had done of things he had seen in his dreams, the Vulcan found a blank page and set the tan color to it with exaggerated force. He then did his best to recall the blond haired man with the golden shirt; how he had looked in his dreams. He pictured that radiant smile, and started to draw him as best as he could. He had drawn this man before. In fact, almost every page had that man's face on it. And if it wasn't his face, then it was the expansive, starlit room with the red floor; or a desert that he had never seen before with buildings too tall to fathom. Sometimes, he even drew pictures of women that he thought he had once known; one of them had dark, glowing skin untainted by blood, and the other, she had skin like his own, and eyes like his own. They were both beautiful. Almost as beautiful as the golden-haired man.

But the man was whom he had drawn the most, and he could not explain why.

The screaming continued as the Vulcan switched colors rapidly to draw the golden shirt, and eventually he switched colors again to draw his eyes. He mustn't mess up the eyes. There were tears falling from his own, and his head was starting to hurt because of it, but he continued drawing anyway. Anything was better than sitting there and waiting for the unknown innocent upstairs to give out his last scream. The silence that always came afterward was so much worse, and he feared the moment when it came.

This was how it was. This was routine. This was normal. But _why_ did it bother him so much?

Right when the Vulcan finished drawing the man's blue eyes, something happened that had never happened before. From out of nowhere, a name ghosted across the Vulcan's mind; a name that for some strange reason caused his heart to flutter in his side with a feeling he had never experienced before, save only in his dreams.

_Jim_…

No sooner had the name crossed his aching mind did the Vulcan let out a painful scream as his system protested the new emotions that came flooding in with the name. Emotions he could not recognize. Emotions he could not process. His entire skull felt like it had exploded, and he errantly wondered if this was how it felt to have one's skull bashed in. He had seen it done before, and it was not something he ever wanted to see again. He was in agony. The name it seemed, had brought about the head pains, and seconds later the Vulcan fell to the side with a hard thud; his world having gone black because of his inability to endure it any longer.

((oOo))

"Wake up! Wake the fuck up!" Someone shouted.

No. Not someone. The Sir.

The Vulcan winced in pain as the hard tip of a boot connected with his exposed ribcage a moment later, effectively taking his breath away. "I said wake up, you little shit!" the Sir furthered, his voice the epitome of fury.

What had he done wrong?

Coming back to himself, the Vulcan immediately tried to sit up as the Sir had instructed, but was finding it difficult. His head ached unbearably, and he could not open his eyes.

"I _said_," the Sir started through gritted teeth, and leaned down to pull the Vulcan up by his matted hair. "To get the fuck up, you fucking animal!" he finished as the Vulcan came stumbling to his bare feet. He finally managed to open his eyes, and instantly squinted them from the onslaught of light in the room. The Sir had apparently turned all of the lights on, and not just the one, and being that he mostly existed in darkness, save the rare trip upstairs or the lights that came from the furnace, the Vulcan's eyes were unaccustomed to the intensity.

"What the fuck is this? Why did you draw this?" the Sir questioned irately as the Vulcan fought to adjust his eyes. He didn't need to _see_ however to _know_ what the Sir had just referenced.

The book.

The drawings.

_No no no no no no. _

Once his eyes had adjusted, the Vulcan spared a glance for the broken and bloodied body lying just behind the Sir, who was standing there with the drawings bunched up in his hand. The expression on his face sent a violent shiver up the Vulcan's spine. He couldn't speak. He couldn't answer the question. His head panged sharply as terror gripped at him.

"I asked you a question, boy! Where did you see these people? Why did you draw this!?" the Sir's tone was bordering on hysterical. The Vulcan knew he was not allowed to draw or have anything, but he had not anticipated the severity of his anger.

"I…" the Vulcan started, unsure of just how to explain to the Sir why he had drawn what he had.

"Do you remember these people?" the Sir interrupted hastily, as if that was all he had wanted to ask in the first place. His voice was dangerously low. Dangerous.

The Vulcan blinked in confusion at the query. Remember? Remember what? They were only dreams…

A sharp sting accosted his face, and sent his head whipping around. The Sir had backhanded him.

"Goddamnit! Answer me! Or I'll throw you in that fucking furnace after I rip your limbs off!"

"I…I see them," the Vulcan managed hoarsely, and as his lips moved he felt a dryness under his nose where blood had once been. He wondered if it had bled while he had been unconscious.

Instead of being satisfied by the answer, the Sir only grew more angered.

"When? When the fuck do you see them? You're not supposed to see them!"

The Vulcan winced from the sheer volume of the other's voice as it stabbed through him. He did not want to answer, but he had been asked a direct question. To not answer would bring punishment. Pain. Misery. Death.

"I see them when I sleep, Sir," he finished, and looked down at the floor before he could stop himself.

Fingers grabbed his chin with crushing force and brought his gaze back upward. He would have bruises on his jaw.

"Don't look away from me when I'm talking to you, dammit. Who are they. What are their names. Tell me, now." The sheer demand in the voice left no room for argument.

"I…do not know," the Vulcan answered truthfully. Well, half truthfully. A name had come to him. Just before…

_BAM_. Another sharp blow to the face.

"Tell me the _fucking _truth!"

"I do not know. Please. I do not know," the Vulcan answered softly but pleadingly, and resisted the urge to shield his face. His face was not his; therefore, he was not permitted to shield it from the Sir. His face belonged to the Sir. Why was that so hard to understand?

For a moment, the Vulcan had been sure that he would be struck again. But instead, the Sir took a step backward, his foot carelessly hitting the dead body behind him, and placed his hands on his hips. His clothing was stained with blood, which made him look all the more menacing.

"I don't believe you," he started darkly. "I think you're a fucking liar. A dirty, fucking liar. I think you know exactly who they are. And not only that, but you've disobeyed me by drawing these. And disobedience isn't tolerated, is it boy?" the Sir asked venomously.

"Please—,"

"IS IT?"

The Vulcan's hands started trembling. He tried to stop them, but failed. "No sir," he answered in a whisper and waited.

The Sir stared at him for a few moments before he signaled to the wall on the right side of the room. "Go put your hands on that wall. Take that nasty fucking shirt off. And don't you dare utter a fucking word unless I ask you to."

The Vulcan felt his back muscles tense. He knew what was coming, but he could not stop it. At least it would prolong the task of disposing of the new body in the room.

Obediently, the Vulcan pulled his tattered shirt over his emaciated frame, and let it drop to the floor. He then walked over to the other side of the room as he'd been instructed, and placed his still blood red hands from where he'd taken apart the woman's body, up on the wall. His back was now exposed to the room. To the Sir.

"You brought this on yourself. And by the end of the night, you will give me a name. You will give me the truth, Vulcan. I will have the fucking truth one way or another."

The sound of the Sir undoing his belt filled the cold, dank basement, and the Vulcan braced himself just before the sound of leather cutting through the air accosted his ears. He couldn't help the gasp of pain that left him as the sharp, stinging pain of a metal belt buckle cut across his bony, scarred back hard enough to break the skin there. He had not endured this particular punishment in quite some time, and that made it all the more harder to bear.

"Who is the man in the drawing?" the Sir asked him.

A part of the Vulcan wished to tell the truth, if only to spare himself, but there was another part of him, an unfamiliar part that wished to protect the name. To keep it safe from the Sir. Why should he have it? "I do not know." was his answer as a result.

Instantly the belt buckle connected with his back again, and hard enough to draw blood. Another gasp of pain followed suit.

"Give me his name."

"I do not know."

This time, the Vulcan whimpered as the buckle struck him again over an already open wound.

"Turn around."

The Vulcan complied.

"Take off your pants."

The Vulcan complied, and winced as the buckle connected with the sensitive flesh of his genitals.

"Give me that fucking name you worthless fuck."

_Jim. _The name felt like a soothing balm across his mind the instant he thought of it. How could he betray such a thing?

"I do not—,"

"DAMMIT!" the Sir screamed and brought the belt back down on the Vulcan's front again and again. He was as furious as the Vulcan had ever seen him. Even more so than when he had tried to save the creature. In protecting a name that did not mean anything; that was not real, the Vulcan had broken the most sacred rule of his existence. Never anger the Sir. Always please the Sir.

"TELL ME HIS FUCKING NAME!" the Sir continued to scream as he brought the belt down again and again over every part of the front of his body including his face. Even if he had wanted to answer, the Vulcan couldn't have because of the ongoing assault. His body felt like it was on fire as the metal tore open his skin, his blood trailing over him and onto the floor. The thought struck him that perhaps he _would_ go into the furnace.

Eventually, the beating ceased, and the Vulcan fell to the floor from sheer exhaustion, his body stinging and burning despite the fact that he was no longer being whipped.

The Sir was breathing heavily as well, and leaning over in an attempt to catch his breath. The Vulcan assumed he had only stopped out of exhaustion himself. "Get up. Get up, now," Sir ordered through his panting, and kicked at the Vulcan to prompt him into moving.

The Vulcan complied even though his body protested.

"Let's go. Upstairs. Now."

The Vulcan halted mid step. Upstairs?

"Sir…"

"I said get up the fucking stairs! Do not question me!" A harsh shove in between the shoulder blades sent the naked Vulcan along, and despite his legs feeling unbearably heavy, he complied. Perhaps he was being given a bath? Perhaps that was the reason he was being ordered upstairs? The Vulcan did not enjoy being bathed, but it was far preferable to the other scenario he was envisioning. However, he knew how foolish such a wish was.

He had to step over the dead body to get up the stairs, and just as his right foot connected with the floor on the other side of said body, the Vulcan's bare feet slipped on a pool of blood that had accumulated around the corpse amidst his beating.

In his battered state, he couldn't prevent himself from falling.

"Goddamnit, you messy, clumsy little shit. Watch where the fuck you're going!" the Sir chastised angrily and grabbed the Vulcan by the hair to stand him back up.

Not wanting to fall again, the Vulcan grabbed the railing and pulled himself up the stairs; the Sir right behind him, pushing him along by the small of his back.

Once they were up on the ground floor, the Vulcan was immediately pushed through a stinking kitchen, through a messy living room with some sort of moving picture making sounds in the background, and eventually through a familiar hallway. When they passed the bathroom, his heart sank.

They were going to the craft room.

Once they were just outside the dreaded room, the Sir pushed him inside by the back of his neck, and he stumbled over to the corner where he had always been ordered to stand on every occasion prior. The craft room smelled heavily of blood and recent death, and the Vulcan wished he could keep his eyes shut so he did not have to see the red evidence splattered all over the room.

He stood numbly as the Sir marched over furiously, grabbed his thin wrists and chained them to the wall so that they were held high above his head. He could vaguely remember there being a reason why he was always chained in this room. There had been something he had once done. Something bad.

Satisfied, the Sir stepped back and let his eyes roam over the Vulcan's bleeding body. "If I wasn't so angry right now, I'd fuck you right on that wall. Show you just how painful my dick can be when you do something that pisses me off."

The Vulcan peered up sharply at that. Perhaps, if he could convince the Sir to do just that, then his original purpose for bringing him into this room would go ignored. "Please, Sir. Please fuck me," he prompted pleadingly, and turned his body ever so slightly toward the Sir. He did not wish for such an act to happen, but he did not wish for the other either.

The Sir licked his lips and stepped closer to the Vulcan until he was nose to nose with him. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, you little whore. You'd like to take my dick. You've always liked my dick despite what you've said to me in the past," he hissed into his pointed ear.

_In the past?_ The Vulcan errantly wondered, for he could not remember such a time where he had ever said anything against the Sir.

"Yes," the Vulcan answered and spread his legs slightly in response. His only goal was to please the Sir. Especially right now.

Harsh hands gripped his thin shoulders and turned him back around before shoving him up against the wall. "Don't worry. I'm going to fuck you until you bleed, but we can do that later. Right now…I'm still short a name, and you're going to give it to me."

The Vulcan's heart thudded painfully in his side. This couldn't happen.

"I'll be back in a couple of hours. And then…we'll see how long you can hold onto your secrets once the screaming begins," the Sir went on playfully while he walked toward the door.

This could not happen. This could not happen. He could not allow this to happen.

Due to his ever-growing panicked thoughts, the Vulcan whimpered as his head throbbed sharply. He could not lose it now.

Just before he walked through the door, the Sir turned back around, his dark eyes dancing with amusement. "Hmmmm…how about a youngling this time? What do you say, ten or twelve years old? I know they're your favorite. And oh how they scream…"

_DO SOMETHING!_ a voice screamed inside of him, and once the pain in his head subsided, the Vulcan opened his mouth just as the Sir turned to leave.

"Jim," he called out, his voice cracking as he betrayed the name to the being now turning back around. He couldn't even bask in the comfort of saying the name aloud given who he had just said it to.

"Excuse me?" the Sir asked sharply, and turned back around.

The Vulcan closed his eyes and opened them again. "Jim. That is his name," the Vulcan reiterated, somehow knowing that what he spoke was the truth. He had never heard the name before, but somehow, he knew that was the blond haired, blue-eyed man's name. Real or not real.

For a moment, the Sir just stood there, his face becoming redder and redder as the seconds ticked by. Had he said something wrong? Something forbidden?

"Jim. You dream about this Jim?" he finally asked as he brought his large body back into the room, his eyes full of accusation, and oddly enough…hurt.

The Vulcan saw no point in lying anymore. And if it would keep another out of this room and away from this pain and death, he would tell the Sir anything he wished to know. One must always please the Sir.

"Yes. I dream about him."

Oddly enough, the Sir started laughing hysterically as he paced the gruesome room, his hands going in and out of his brown, thinning hair. "All this time. After all this _fucking_ time and you'd betray me for that fucker. All the time I've fucking invested…"

_What?_ The Vulcan thought in confusion as his eyes tracked the Sir's moving form; for he had no idea what he was talking about. Jim was not real. He was merely a man that existed in his dreams. Nothing more. How could the Vulcan have betrayed the Sir over a name?

"After everything I've done to ensure…GOD, I'm so fucking stupid!" the Sir went on and threw a glass object that had been resting on the table up against the wall. The Vulcan winced as it shattered; the shards raining down onto the bloody floor.

Fearing that his own body would soon become an object for the Sir's fury, the Vulcan opened his mouth to speak. "I am sorry, Sir. I will not think of him again. I will only think of you," he tried as sincerely as possible. Never before had he wished for his grimy pallet down in the basement more than he did right now. Being in this room made him nauseous. It made him afraid; which in turn, made his head throb.

Instead of growing angry, the Sir halted and turned to face him, his expression one the Vulcan had never seen before. "I'm sorry too. Sorry it's come to this," he spoke in just above a whisper before turning away and all but running from the room.

The Vulcan watched him go, fearing the moment he returned, and who he might return with.

((oOo))

The Vulcan wasn't sure how long he stood there, his wrists chained to the wall so that he was forced to stand. Eventually, his legs grew too exhausted though, and he was forced to hang there, his wrists pulling uncomfortably on the chains.

He had been hanging there long enough for all of the blood in the room to dry when the Sir finally returned. The Vulcan was so exhausted though that he barely noticed him walk in, nor step over to him. All he could feel was the dryness in his throat from not having anything to drink, and the unbearable pain in his stomach from not eating anything for so long.

However, when rough, dirty hands began groping his body, the Vulcan took notice. A moment of confusion washed over him given how the Sir smelled. He smelled different than he usually did. He smelled like the earthy ground in the basement; the part not covered by stone, which was odd.

The Vulcan couldn't help but gasp in pain as the Sir pushed his numb body up against the wall, the motion pulling on his chaffed and bleeding wrists, which in turn pulled on the chains. He couldn't help but shiver as the man's icy belt buckle pressed against his lower back, and dug into his injured skin from the whipping. There was a familiar hardness pressing up against him as well, and if he hadn't known before, the Vulcan knew now what was about to happen. It was odd and unusual that the familiar song he had grown so used to hearing during these moments was not playing. The Sir _always_ played that song. The fact that he wasn't now was unsettling, even if the Vulcan did hate it.

Obediently, he spread his legs apart to give the Sir more access. It would not help worrying about that song, and the more compliant he was, the faster it would happen, and the sooner it would be over. Perhaps he would even be permitted to eat or drink after this. He was so thirsty.

"Yes. Good boy. Spread your legs for me," the Sir breathed into his ear while his hands moved from the Vulcan's hips and to his pants where he undid his belt. The Vulcan inhaled as the Sir's hardness jutted out and pressed against him, not entering him yet…but it was only a matter of time.

Both of them gasped when the thrust finally came, the force of it violent and swift. The Sir's gasp had been in needy pleasure. The Vulcan's; in pain.

As the Sir continued to take him there in the craft room, The Vulcan's gasps turned into cries of pain. The Sir had always been harsh and rough, but this? This was different. This was much more intense than it had ever been before. The pace was brutally painful, and at one point, the Vulcan was unsure if other objects hadn't been used as well in place of the Sir's organ. It was not a common occurrence, but such things _had_ happened before.

He was bleeding, he knew, but as much as he wished to plead with the Sir to stop. To end his suffering, he kept his silence.

One must always please the Sir.

And if he was here pleasing him, the Sir was not killing someone else.

"Fuck you," the Sir grunted into his ear. "Fuck you, you fucking Vulcan. I fucking loved you…I fucking HATE you for doing this to me…" he rasped as he continued pushing him into the wall at a brutal pace; the chains above him rattling in sync with each thrust. What surprised the Vulcan next was when he felt liquid on his shoulder quickly followed by the sounds of restrained sobbing.

The Sir was crying.

Why? Crying was a negative emotion. An emotion that brought the head pains. Why would the Sir cry?

"I…I am sorr—," the Vulcan started to say in the midst of the punishing thrusts. He wished for the Sir to be pleased with him. Not angry. Never angry.

However, calloused hands coated in whatever the Vulcan had first smelled snaked around his face and covered his mouth to keep him from speaking as the assault continued. "Don't fucking speak. Don't…" the Sir paused at a particularly hard thrust that apparently required his focus, "I can't—I can't hear that voice right now. Don't you fucking speak."

And he didn't speak. Throughout it all, the Vulcan hung there in silence as the Sir pushed into him again and again until his body began to feel numb. When it was over and he was released from his chains, he could not help but fall immediately onto the floor, his legs useless and exhausted from their chronic positioning; his arms numb and stinging from lack of circulation. His back protested painfully as his raw flesh from the whipping down in the basement connected with the floor.

"Get up." The order was given in monotone, but with all the menace of a yell.

Instinctively, the Vulcan attempted to push himself up. One must always please the Sir.

But he couldn't do that. He couldn't please. The Vulcan could not get himself up off the floor. His body would not obey him. His head throbbed in pain as fear began to grip at him for not being able to obey.

"I said. _Get_ up." the Sir tried again, this time in a much darker voice. The Vulcan knew what happened if he had to be asked a third time.

Feebly, he brought his stinging arms around to help bring himself up. He didn't know how he managed it, but eventually his limbs did as he had asked. Next to come were his legs, which screamed in agony as he brought them forward to his chest. The Sir had been too rough with him, and now he could barely stand without sharp spasms of pain shooting up his rectum and into his back.

His body shivered from the cold as he stood there naked; the blood on his skin—his own as well as the blood of the corpses—making him even colder. Now that he was facing the Sir, he could see the dirt on his hands as well as his pants. Again, the Vulcan wondered where he had been and what he had been doing to acquire such characteristics.

"Come on. Let's go," the Sir ordered in that same monotone voice just before shoving the stumbling Vulcan out of the room and into the hallway.

He was relieved to be out of the craft room; away from all of that death. Perhaps now he would be taken back to the basement and left alone. The Vulcan knew there was a body down there, waiting to be disposed of, but despite that, all he wanted was to be down in the basement and away from the Sir. Away from the craft room. He did not have his drawings any longer though, and despite the head pain, that fact made the Vulcan sad.

When they arrived back into the living room, instead of going into the kitchen which would then take them back to the basement, the Sir pushed the Vulcan toward the front door.

The front door he had never been through. The front door that led to the outside world. The front door that led to the unknown.

Unable to help himself, the Vulcan halted almost fearfully, and his body angled toward the basement. He did not want to go through the front door. For some reason, he got the feeling that something bad would happen if he were to go through it. That something bad _had _happened once…

But he could not remember.

"No. You're not going back to your basement. We're going on a ride," the Sir cut in abruptly in that same, disturbingly detached voice, and pushed his hand into the Vulcan's back to steer him closer to the door.

_A ride? _The Vulcan thought in fearful bemusement. He did not understand what a _ride_ was, and he did not want to find out either. If he had never drawn those pictures, he would not be in this situation. He had only himself to blame. One must never anger the Sir, and he had done just that.

His need to obey overpowered his fear, and the Vulcan found himself walking toward the door; every step as agonizing as the last given the ordeal he had just been through.

Once they had arrived in front of it, the Sir placed himself in front of the Vulcan and leveled his dark eyes at him. "Once we go through here, you stay right with me. You even _think_ about running, and I'll make you regret it."

The Vulcan nodded in obedience. The mere thought of attempting to _run away_ had never even crossed his mind. Where would he run? What else was there besides this existence here? There was nothing else. There was only the Sir.

The Sir's eyes softened as he gazed upon him, and he sighed and brought his dirty fingers up to caress the Vulcan's cheek. "I really wish it had not come to this…" he added regretfully before turning, opening the door, and pushing the Vulcan through.

The sheer intensity of the light outside caused the Vulcan to clench his eyes shut and flinch away in an attempt to go back inside, but the Sir's strong grip on his arms kept him from doing so.

"Now, now. It's fine. It's only sunlight. You remember that, don't you? You remembered that fucking Captain…" the Sir breathed out angrily as he pushed the Vulcan along and out into an environment that felt completely alien to him.

He did not know light could be so bright or so painful. There was also an erratic current of air batting against him, and with it, a whipping sound that scared him. The chill from the air was overpowering, especially in his nakedness, and the Vulcan could not stop his teeth from instantly starting to chatter. There was also a litany sounds that he thought he had once known, but could not identify. None of these things existed in the basement. There had only been silence and screams and the voice of the woman singing her sad song along with the voice of the Sir.

Hearing these sounds now scared him. It was too much to process. Too overwhelming. There was no meaning. No purpose. Why?

"No! Move! Quit fighting me!" the Sir yelled as the Vulcan continued to struggle despite his want to obey. He did not like the feeling of the ground beneath him; so moist and grainy. The smell of it was the same smell that the Sir had brought in with him back up in the craft room.

The same smell.

He did not like the coldness that the erratic air made him feel. He did not like this. Any of this.

Yet, one must always please the Sir.

"There you go. Good boy. Now, open your eyes and come along," the Sir encouraged him as he pushed him along, this time by the back of his neck.

The Vulcan obeyed, and ignored the way his eyes stung as he opened his lids to embrace the new light. It was terribly bright, but unlike down in the basement whenever the Sir would turn the lights on, the Vulcan could not get his eyes to adjust to the new intensity. It stung and made his head hurt. His eyes watered and protested with every step.

But he could make out some things. Things like colors he had never seen before except in dreams. The main color being an overwhelming hue of green almost everywhere he dared to look.

A word suddenly ghosted across his mind as he took in the color: _Trees_. The green belonged to trees, and grass, and bushes. All of these words came crashing into the Vulcan as he looked upon them through squinted eyes. All of these words made his head hurt.

In addition to that, everything around him was so _open_. So big. He had no idea that so much could exist just through that front door. He felt like it might swallow him up, and again…he wished for his basement. The room where this overbearing light that attacked his eyes wouldn't find him.

Eventually, the pair came to a large object with wheels on every side. The Vulcan searched his mind for the correct term, but it was lost to him.

Brushing past him, the Sir walked up to the object and opened up a compartment in the back of it. He then looked at him and motioned to it. "Get in the trunk, and keep quiet," he ordered apathetically. The Vulcan quickly filed the term '_trunk' _away and moved his aching body forward to the dark space that had been indicated. Inside it, he could make out some rudimentary tools; some of which he had seen down in the basement.

As he moved his body into the _trunk_, the same material that had been on the Sir's hands was also on some of the tools, and it made the Vulcan wonder if the two were connected. Why was this particular material so abundant?

No sooner had he thought the question did his head sear in pain. Curiosity to such a high degree was always a trigger for the head pains.

"Remember. Keep your mouth shut or I will sow it up." Was all that was said to him before the trunk door slammed shut over his face, effectively sending him back into darkness once again. He heard the muffled sounds of someone walking, and then the trunk moved as an added weight got inside the object. _A vehicle?_ his mind errantly supplied just before the head pain forced him to push it away.

Moments later the object/vehicle roared to life and the Vulcan got the sense that they were moving. Where? He had no idea. He only knew that he mustn't become afraid, or the head pain would come back.

((oOo))

The Vulcan did not know how long he had been in the trunk by the time the vehicle finally came to a stop. It had been long enough though that at one point, his bladder had overwhelmed him, and he had been forced to relieve himself there in the darkness. The urine stung his wounds, but that had paled in comparison to the thought of what the Sir would do once he saw what he had done. The Vulcan knew he would be displeased at such a _filthy_ display.

He stiffened as the sound of the Sir getting out vibrated through the trunk's walls, and braced himself when he heard him fumbling at the opening.

When the trunk opened, the light came soaring through and again the Vulcan clenched his eyes shut to shield himself from the intensity of it.

"Goddamnit! You just had to piss yourself, didn't you! And now it's all in my fucking trunk!" the Sir exclaimed angrily and reached down to pull the Vulcan out by his hair. "This car is a fucking antique!" he went on as he manhandled the Vulcan's bruised and bleeding body.

His body, extremely stiff from the journey, protested sharply as the Vulcan came up and out of the trunk. But the Sir paid it no attention.

"You couldn't make these last moments pleasant, could you. Of course not. But if I was him. If I was that fucking Captain, I bet you would have," the Sir added darkly before pushing him along into a throng of green and brown.

The Vulcan blinked in confusion at the references to this _Captain_, whatever that was supposed to be, continued to be made. He had no idea what the Sir was talking about. Was he supposed to know?

As they made their way away from the vehicle, his train of thought was halted by the overwhelming sight before him.

_A forest_, his mind supplied as his pained eyes took in his new surroundings. Strange how much he was starting to realize he knew. In fact, he was so caught up in said surroundings that he hadn't spared a second thought to the words, _last moments_ that the Sir had just uttered.

They walked for a long time, and the Vulcan did not think he had ever been colder than he was now. He wished he had his clothes on to help protect him from this biting air. He also wished they didn't have to walk so much. He was so unused to walking, and several times he would trip and stumble because of it.

"You clumsy little shit. Watch where the fuck you're going!" the Sir screamed at him the fourth time he had fallen to the ground because of a cramp in his leg.

"I am sorry…" he mumbled, which earned him a kick in the ribs.

"I said not to fucking speak, didn't I? Now get up and keep walking. It's not much further now."

The Vulcan obeyed and pushed himself back off the ground. His leg throbbed painfully, but he ignored it.

They walked for a few more minutes before coming to a small clearing.

In the middle of that clearing was a large hole that had been dug into a peculiar shape, and just looking at it made the Vulcan feel uneasy. This was not right. Something bad was going to happen.

"Here we are," the Sir proclaimed in nearly a whisper as they came to stand closer to the hole. Inside, and a good way down into the gound, was a box shaped in the same shape as the hole that had been dug. A box big enough for a body.

Now the Vulcan was really starting to feel uneasy, and his head panged as a result. Something told him to run, to get away, but his need to obey won out.

"I wanted to end this back there. But I couldn't do it. I just can't fucking do it, you mean too much to me," the Sir went on as tears began welling up in his eyes.

The Vulcan merely stood there, his shoulders tense while he listened. He had no idea what the man was talking about, but he knew it could mean nothing good. The Sir seemed to grow angry at his continued silence.

"I didn't want to do this! I want you to know that! I never wanted us to end up like this…but when you said that name, I knew it was all pointless. You can never be mine if you're his. But if you can't be mine, then no one will have you," the Sir finished in the darkest voice the Vulcan had ever heard from him.

The Vulcan remained silent still as the Sir referenced the man he assumed was the same one he saw in his dreams. What else could he say? He had been told not to speak. And one must always please the sir.

"But, even if I can't kill you myself. It has to be done. It has to end. I thought I might change my mind while digging this, but I haven't. It has to be this way. Now get in," the Sir furthered in a shuddering voice, and indicated to the box in the hole.

Sick understanding dawned on the Vulcan, and he could not help the terror that swelled in his chest. His head doing its best to follow it up with the sharp pains.

"Sir, please…I will be good—," he tried desperately. "I will not say the name again," he added, wanting nothing more than to go back to the trunk and get inside. He should never have walked through the front door. He should have tried harder to please the Sir. Because if he had, he would not be here in this unfamiliar environment being ordered to get into a box in the ground.

The man started shaking his head as tears came running down his cheeks. "No. I don't believe you. Three years. Three years of hard work, and you still haven't let that life go. I have to do this. It's the best thing for you. Now. Get in," he replied forcefully and pointed to the hole.

"Please…"

"Get IN!" the Sir cut him off, and before the Vulcan could react, placed his arms on his bare chest and pushed him backward and toward the hole.

Weak and unprepared, the Vulcan went falling backward and landed with a painful thud into the box. His right leg hung on the wall of it, and his head exploded in pain from where it had struck the wooden floor. Despite his attempts to move; to flee from the box, he could not get his body to work. His head hurt too much. He was so dizzy.

Blearily, he could make out the Sir sticking a long stick down to move his leg off the side of the box so that it was inside with the rest of his body. He looked at the man's face and squinted his eyes against the bright light invading his senses as he tried to make out the expression there. His heart was beating so fast that he felt it might explode.

"I loved you, Spock. So fucking much…"

The Vulcan blinked in spite of himself. _Spock? _He had heard that name before. That name had once meant something. That name had meant something.

But he didn't have time to ponder it further, for a second later, the long stick that had been used to shift his leg into the box went to the lid that was attached, and pushed it closed. There were strips of light in the ceiling of the box from the outside world, and the Vulcan tried his hardest to see through them.

"I'm so sorry…" came the muffled words of the Sir from above, and following right after them was the sound of something hitting the top of the box in increments. A few particles came through the cracks as a result, and that was when the Vulcan realized that the thing hitting the top of the box in monochrome sequence was the same material that had been on the tools, and on the ground, and on the Sir's hands. The box, it seemed, was being covered in it.

He was being buried.

The Vulcan—_Spock?_ Started panicking as the sound continued, and each time it did, the box got darker and darker until finally…every strip of light had been put out. The air became stale and compressed, and the box became unbearably quiet. He could no longer hear the sounds of the outside environment. The sounds that had once overwhelmed him, but now, he wanted to hear more than anything. He could no longer hear the Sir's words, or his sobbing. Everything had gotten so quiet and so still. His body ached and throbbed, and he wished to move it to quell that pain, but he could not. The box restricted his movements. Forced him to lie still.

He could scream. He certainly wanted to, but he kept silent. Even now he wished to obey. Screaming was not tolerated. It was never tolerated from him and would only bring about the head pains.

He wondered how long it would be until he felt nothing any more. He wondered if when he did finally leave, if he would go to that world in his dreams. The dreams that had put him here in the first place.

Eventually, an overwhelming darkness overtook him, and he knew no more.

**AN. Soooooooooooo, I really want to get your opinions. I've hardened myself for all manner of responses to this, especially how I ended it and just how the fuck Spock got into this situation. A note about this is that while I've marked it as complete? I do have plans to come back to this after How We Operate and Perdition are complete and expand on it to make it a multi-chaptered, full blown fic like my other works. It's already been outlined and everything. **

**The reason I posted this now was because I'm honestly a bit insecure about writing this, given the horror and true crime theme which again isn't seen a lot in this fandom, and I wanted to see if enough people would be interested in seeing it finished. Also. It's Halloween, and I found this type of story fitting for this time of year. I know it seems like I killed Spock at the end…but how could I make this multi-chaptered with Spock dead? For one thing, I can't kill Spock and I technically don't at the end of this. Do you guys think I'd leave him to die in that coffin? Nope. But again, I intend on expanding this one-shot after my other stuff is complete. I really just want to see what people think of this given the nature of it. Thanks for reading! I feel so much better having gotten this off my chest. **


	2. The Vulcan in the Box

**A.N. Okay, so if you were fine with how the first chapter ended, then I recommend not reading this part. Some people told me they took peace in the fact that Spock would apparently die after being buried, and therefore be at peace. If you are one of those people, then I wouldn't read this addition, and I definitely wouldn't read the expansion when it finally comes. **

**I was going to leave this how it was; a one-shot with one chapter, but I kind of wanted to leave you guys off on a more hopeful note that would kind of hint around to what kind of story this is going to be. Just to be clear, this won't be getting finished this year, nor will it be getting finished until perdition and How We Operate are both done, but again…I thought it would be nice to leave you guys off on a…better note where Spock's future in this story. **

**I don't claim to be a medical professional, so any medical shortcomings, I apologize for. And, I want to thank everyone who has reviewed on this so far. It's definitely a different kind of story for me, and I'm very excited to expand it when I get the time. Please enjoy! **

** Chapter Two**

** The Vulcan in the Box**

**North Carolina**

**Appalachian Mountains**

"Come on slow poke. If I'd known you were this out of shape, I wouldn't have chosen this particular spot," Marie Clarington called back to her husband Emmett, who was struggling quite abashedly up the hill she'd just traveled up, his breathing fast and erratic. He had never been the outdoorsy type.

Emmett paused and glared up at her just as their three-year old German Shepard, Gage, bulleted past him; his footing rapid and hasty.

Marie found herself smirking. "See? Even Gage is tired of waiting on you," she chided as her dog came up to her and licked at her hand affectionately.

Her comment earned her another flustered glare. "You realize that the only reason I'm killing myself up in these godforsaken mountains is because of my undying love for you, right?" Emmett announced sarcastically just as he reached the top of the hill to stand beside Marie. It was beyond obvious he was trying not to appear fatigued. Funny how all men liked to appear invincible in front of their female counterparts, like they had something to prove.

"Of course my sweet husband! And when we get back to the cabin, I'll be sure to show you my _own_ version of undying love," Marie quipped and lowered her eyes seductively. Honestly, she could show her husband now and have no complaints about it. The mere image of a sweating man covered in the scent of the outdoors as they made love in the dirt was a complete turn-on for her.

"Oh? Two nights in a row?" Emmett commented with a raised eyebrow just as Gage bounded back over to him and leaned his furry head against his thigh. Her husband reached down and let his hand massage Gage's pointed ears as a result.

"Well, this _is_ our honeymoon, Em. I think making hot, sensual love under the stars is in order every night, don't you?" she replied playfully and turned from him to continue their hike. Gage left Emmet's side to follow right along beside her, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth. Marie could practically _feel_ her husband's smile from behind her, and thought for what had to have been the hundredth time since their wedding two days ago, that she was the luckiest woman on Earth, and quite possibly, the entire Federation. Not even her graduation from law school two months prior could trump this.

"But seriously, Marie. Why this particular trail? It's not even on the map," Emmett sounded breathlessly just as he came jogging up beside her, stopped, and brought a water bottle up to his lips.

Marie smiled impishly. "That's _why_ I picked it, hun. What's fun about a boring old trail that's been traveled over a thousand times? Don't you want a little adventure? A little spontaneity?"

Emmett lowered the water bottle and gave her a knowing look. "If I wanted that, I'd join Starfleet and serve on the famous Captain Kirk's ship."

Marie canted her head and raised an eyebrow. "Starfleet? I'll believe that when I see it," she chastised and went on walking. Before Emmett could say anything in response though, Gage took off ahead of them in a barking fit. Something had caught his attention.

_That's strange, _she thought uneasily as she rushed to follow her fleeing dog, her husband right behind her. "Gage!" she called out. "Gage! Come back here!" It was unlike him to go running off like that, and it made Marie nervous. Her dogs were always well trained. They weren't the sort to go off after squirrels or birds.

"Gage! Come here, boy!" Emmett yelled as well just as they lost sight of the barking canine. He swore under his breath. "Dammit, Marie! That's why I said he needs a leash up here!" he added in irritation as they both quickened their jogs into choppy sprints over the uneven dirt.

Marie ignored him and focused on the barking. Finally, they followed the sounds into a small earthy clearing where their dog was currently digging erratically into the ground and barking at the same time.

That was also unlike him. Gage never dug holes at home, and it made her even more nervous that he was doing it now.

"Gage! Come here!" Marie called to her dog, but he ignored her and continued digging. Frustrated, the woman stepped closer, but what she saw made her halt instantly. The place where her dog was digging looked oddly like a recent burial site for something. The dirt was fresh; like a hole had just been filled in, and the shaping of it was so reminiscent of what she had seen at her grandfather's funeral five years ago.

A morbid, rectangular shape.

Perhaps most people might not have thought such a thing right at first, but she hadn't spent six years in law school to be a tax lawyer. No, she'd studied to become a prosecutor, and she had seen enough crime scene photos to know what she was looking at.

"Is this what I think it is?" Emmett sounded quietly from beside her as they both came to stand just beside the fresh patch of dirt, Gage digging and barking all the while. Her husband was a criminologist. He knew exactly what _it_ was as well.

Marie knelt down and fingered the dirt. It was moist despite the fact that it had not rained in some time, which only confirmed her previous theory. Someone had recently been here, and buried something.

_Or buried someone…_

"Emmett, get out your communicator. Comm the police," Marie blurted out just as Gage's barking transpired into desperate whines. Her dog was upset, and it was because of whatever had been buried underneath the dirt. She knew dogs had a sixth sense about those things, and she wasn't about to ignore that fact now.

Emmett didn't even answer her as he dropped his backpack to the ground and rummaged through it to locate the communicator. In the meantime, Marie had dropped down beside her dog, her knees melding into the dirt, and started digging along with him. She knew how pointless that probably was, given she was only using her hands, but she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't sit here and do nothing as they waited on the police to fly out here in their air cars.

"Hello? This is Dr. Emmett Clarington and I need the police sent out to these coordinates…" Marie heard her husband saying in the background as she worked her hands diligently through the dirt. Every time her fingers scraped across a stray, buried rock, or a particularly hard piece of mud, her heart would jump in her chest for fear that she had just touched someone's skull, or arm, or leg. It was a morbid thing to think, but again, you didn't spend years in the criminal justice field without becoming extremely aware of such things.

Marie heard the tenor of Emmet's voice in the background, but she was so focused on her task that she had drowned out the voice to listen for sounds from the Earth. The day had started out fun and invigorating, but could likely end with death and despair.

"No! We haven't found a body! You're not listening to me!" Emmet's strained and irritated voice sounded loudly, effectively grabbing half of her attention once again from just a few feet away. "My wife and I were hiking, and we stumbled upon what looks like a recent burial site. I need the fucking police out here, now! I'm a damn criminologist! I know what this shit looks like!" he finished irately. There was a lengthy pause before her husband sighed, forcing her to look up and witness him rubbing his forehead in exasperation. "Yes. Please just hurry. My wife is digging now—,"

Obviously someone had started talking on the other end, and had cut him off. But whatever they had said caused his face to become beat red with anger. "Tampering with a crime scene? Look, it's possible that if there _is_ someone buried there, they're not dead!"

"Just hang up, Emmett! They're on their way! I could use your help down here!" Marie yelled in a panicked voice. Her husband was absolutely right. Sure, most of the time these kinds of things indicated that a body had been disposed of. But sometimes…

Sometimes that wasn't always the case.

"Look. Just hurry. We're going to do what we need to here. Just do your job," Emmett spat harshly and slammed the communicator shut. He then thrust it on top of his bag and skidded in beside Marie to assist in digging. "If whatever this is, or _whoever_ it is, is buried deep, we won't be able to reach them like this," he added depressingly, yet his hands continued to thread through the dirt just like hers.

Marie focused intensely on the dirt; Gage's whines still the most audible thing in the forest. "I know that, Em. But I can't sit here. You're right. Someone could be alive down there…"

Emmett paused and looked up at her, his face pale and remorseful. "I know that's what I said, but the chances of that are less than five percent, Marie…"

Marie looked away sharply and stabbed into the dirt again with her fingers. She was working so hard she had sweat trailing down her face despite it being nice, cool, and quite breezy outside.

"Marie…" Emmett tried again.

"Look, I know!" she yelled suddenly, and paused to give Emmett a desperate look. "I know what were likely to find, but can't I at least _bank_ on that five percent?" she finished in a much gentler voice. Emmett looked at her thoughtfully before nodding, and resumed helping her dig.

The police arrived thirty minutes later, which had been much too slow in Marie's mind. There could be someone suffocating down there, and it was like the local law enforcement just didn't give a shit.

By the time they'd landed their air cars down in a big enough space, and traveled the distance to the coordinates on Emmet's communicator, Marie, her husband, and Gage had already made quite a bit of lee way in their digging attempts. They were at least two feet into the ground now, and Marie knew it would take the entire night to remove the dirt from her fingernails. Her arms ached unbearably, but the adrenaline coursing through her system made it so she barely registered the feeling.

"Please step over here, ma'am; sir." One of the officers requested as he and his team stepped toward the burial site; machines in their arms that would dig the rest of the way. A century ago they would have brought shovels, but nowadays, technology had made a lot of things easier, and far quicker.

"Gage, come." Marie prompted her German Shepard as she took him by the collar and all but dragged him over and off to the side so they would be out of the way.

"Dr. Clarington?" One of the officers asked once they'd moved out of the team's way.

"Yes, I'm Dr. Clarington. I commed you guys," Emmett clarified a bit rudely. Marie didn't blame him.

"I'm Officer Higgins. I'd like to ask you a few questions, and then, Mrs. Clarington?" Higgins looked over to her.

Marie, who was still watching the other police men as they surrounded the burial site, pried her eyes away from where they were currently setting up their machines that would soon be removing the dirt layer by layer. "Yes. Yes I'm Marie Clarington," she answered dismissively. She was all for answering questions, but right now, she just wanted to focus on the place she'd been digging at for the past half hour. She wanted—_needed—_to know what had been buried there. She would answer questions later.

Officer Higgins seemed to get the subtle message, and instead turned back to Emmett. "If you don't mind sir, I'll ask you some basic questions now, and we'll save the rest for back at the station."

Her husband palmed his forehead. "Ah, right. You guys will need a statement I guess," he said tiredly, indicating how long the night was probably going to get.

"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. This might not be a crime scene at all. It could be someone's buried treasured for all we know," Higgins replied, but the way he said it meant he really didn't believe that. He knew—everyone knew, what they were probably going to find. No person took the time to dig a hole in the shape of a rectangle to bury treasure. "But in case it is a potential crime scene, then yes, I will need you two to come down to the station and make a statement."

"Of course," her husband replied tightly, gripped Marie's shoulder gently, and prompted the officer off in the other direction. "Alright, Officer Higgins. What would you like…" but before Marie could hear the rest, her husband and the officer had walked off to the other side of the clearing.

Feeling unbearably anxious and afraid now that Emmett had left, Marie gripped Gage's collar tighter and watched with bated breath as the dirt started disappearing in the beams of light caused by the machine. There was a spotlight shining down on the hole given that it had started to get dark, and Marie wrapped her dirty arms around herself to suppress the shiver she wanted to give as a result of the cold.

About five minutes passed by before one of the officers on the team shouted for them to stop. "Hey! I think I've got something here! Turn that off and give me the handheld," the man ordered, his eyes never leaving the hole he was now almost completely submerged in.

Despite being ordered to stay back, Marie found herself inching toward the hole. She had to know. She had to see.

She watched in nervous fascination as the man took the handheld shovel and began removing the dirt himself. A second later, two other men jumped down and began to help him. When one of the shovels went down and hit something solid, Marie knew they had found something. They had found the thing that had been buried.

"Found it! Kline, go get Higgins!" the initial officer yelled to one of the men still standing just out of the hole, his face showing signs of apprehension. He looked young, and Marie errantly wondered if this was the first time he had ever dealt with something like this. "Kline! Now!" the man furthered when Kline never made a move.

Finally, he blinked and came out of his daze. "Sorry, Rains! I'm on it!" he yelled and all but tripped over himself to get to Higgins who was still on the other side of the clearing speaking with Emmett. Marie took that as her chance to step closer until she could clearly make out a wooden box hidden amongst the dirt; the men on top of it scurrying to remove all of the dirt.

"Shit, man," one of the men muttered as they worked diligently to remove the earthy debris until the box began to take the shape of a coffin. Marie felt her heart start to race. There was usually only one thing in a coffin, and a part of her wanted to turn her face away as they used the handhelds to begin prying the lid off. What if, once the lid came off, there was a body inside that was in an advanced stage of decomposition? What if it was a child? What if the body had been mutilated beyond recognition, implying that they had died horribly? She wasn't sure she could bear to see that. Beside her, Gage was barking madly and trying to break free from her grip which only increased her anxiety.

However, despite her anxiety, she couldn't help but move forward in order to see better.

"Someone shut that dog up!" the man named Rains shouted over his shoulder as they worked at the lid, but Marie, who had stopped now, was frozen in place. She could not look away, and she could not speak, and as the lid finally came off, her eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat.

The other officers leaned back in shocked surprise as well, for there inside was not a decaying body at all, but a man; a beaten, bloodied, and morbidly thin man. However, the fact that there was a body in the coffin wasn't the most shocking thing. What was shocking was that upon further inspection, it was obvious that the body belonged to not just a man, but a Vulcan. There was no mistaking the eyebrows, and while his slightly long and matted hair covered his ears, the green blood trailing down his nose was enough to prove that he was not human.

"Holy shit," Rains stated quietly.

"Is there a pulse?" Higgins yelled as he came shoving past Marie. Emmett stopped beside her, his eyes looking upon the being inside the coffin in what could only be identified as shock as well.

Rains stretched his hand out and put his fingers up against the Vulcan's dirty thin neck. She knew Vulcan's didn't like to be touched, and the fact that the Vulcan in the box did not stir at all when Rains put his fingers on him disturbed her. She could feel her heart pounding in her ears as she waited to hear the truth, and it pained her to see how every bone in his deathly pale body stood out in a pronounced fashion underneath his bruised and bleeding skin. She had never seen a Vulcan in such a state, and it gave her chills to think of what had been done to bring him to such a point.

Another disturbing aspect was the red blood mixed with his own all across his body, but Marie had no time to ponder that, for Rains had found his answer just seconds later.

"It's fucking faint, Higgins, but it's there. He's alive. I don't know how since he's been buried in that fucking box for who knows how long, but he's alive," Rains breathed out, his voice sated with relief as well as awed disbelief.

Marie let out a sizeable breath and leaned her head into her husband's shoulders as tears began to filter out of her eyes. He was alive. The Vulcan, the _person_, was alive. They had found him, and gotten to him in time.

An unknown expression flitted across Officer Higgins' face for half a second before he pulled out his law enforcement issued communicator and started barking orders into it. "I need a med team out to coordinates registered under Officer Bruce, J. Higgins. Serial number: 23D3-F783I. We've got a Vulcan male in immediate need of medical attention. I also need every available officer in the area out to the same coordinates, ASAP. We've got attempted murder, and aggravated assault and kidnapping by an unknown suspect who's still at large. I repeat: still at large. All officers please respond. Higgins out." The officer snapped his communicator shut and glanced down at Gage who was struggling still in Marie's grip. "That dog right there might have just saved that Vulcan's life," he added meaningfully before moving toward the hole where the other officers were working to bring the Vulcan out of the box and out of the hole.

Marie cringed on the words, _might have, _because it meant there was still a chance that the Vulcan could die. How long had he been down there without air? What other injuries did he have aside from the most obvious ones? For all she knew, he could be internally bleeding! Even now, as they pulled his frail, naked and broken body out of the hole and gently laid him onto a blanket that had been brought out, Marie couldn't help but feel fear for him. Fear that this was only the beginning of something horrible.

"When that med team gets here. I need a DNA sample taken. We need to find out who this is. It could lead us to a suspect, and the longer we wait, the further our chances of catching the son of a bitch get," Higgins commented loudly just as Officer Kline, who had gone pale by now, threw another blanket over the unconscious Vulcan. Apparently, the first one had been deemed _not good enough. _

Somehow, Gage had gotten away from Marie's hold and wasted not time in bounding over to the Vulcan to lick his bruised and bleeding face. Her heart broke as the dog whimpered and moved his tongue down to a sizable wound on the Vulcan's chest; a lash mark, and began to lick there instead. When Marie looked closer, she could see multiple lash marks on the Vulcan's chest. Suddenly, the tears came faster now when she thought about how he might have gotten them.

"Someone get this fucking dog!" One of the other officers yelled in irritation as he tried to push Gage away, but Marie couldn't really comprehend him through the tears running down her face. Fortunately, Emmett saw her inner battle and went and collected Gage in her stead. The Shepard did not want to be pulled away from the Vulcan, but eventually, he was.

"Who would do this?" she asked no one in particular. "Who would bury someone alive out here and leave them to die? Who would do that?" she added, her voice growing louder as all manner of images paraded through her head. Not only was this a sentient being, but he was a Vulcan; a race that prided themselves on peace and non-violence. To think that someone would do this kind of violence to one of them…

"There are a lot of sick people out there, ma'am," Higgins spoke from just beside her, his eyes pained and hard. "But we will find out. He's not going to die out here. Not on my watch."

It was then that the sounds of the ambulance flying through the air vibrated all around them. Finally, help had arrived.

((oOo))

Detective Higgins made sure to give the EMT unit all the space they needed as they came rushing into the small clearing, a hovering stretcher following behind them.

One of them—a doctor, Higgins assumed, given the different attire he sported as opposed to the rest of his team in addition to the overwhelming presence—pulled out a medical tricorder while the EMT unit transferred the unconscious Vulcan from the ground and up onto the hovering stretcher. All of them were shouting medical orders to one another that Higgins didn't really understand, and someone had already placed an oxygen mask over his face by the time they'd gotten him up on the floating contraption.

Errantly, Higgins wondered why a doctor had accompanied the EMT unit, because usually, they didn't. But then again, Vulcans weren't usually visiting their hospitals either. Perhaps the doctor had come along because he was the only one who really knew how to treat one, and didn't want the EMT's to screw it up. The hospital in Boone was pretty rural, which meant they probably didn't see much else than human beings.

The couple that had found the Vulcan; Marie and Emmett Clarington, were standing anxiously just a few feet away, both of their eyes glued to the being on the stretcher. He could see the woman's tears as she leaned into her husband, and he could see the fear on both of their faces. Emmett Clarington had told him he was a criminologist, so the pale pallor to his skin, indicating he was disturbed by this entire thing, was a surprise to Higgins. Surely being a criminologist, this man would be used to cases like this.

But then again, even Higgins was having a slightly hard time with the situation. He'd seen a lot of things in his time as a detective, but nothing like this. If someone had told him this morning as he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye, dropped by his favorite coffee shop, and made his way into the station with a pastry in his hands, that he would be digging up a barely alive Vulcan out in the middle of Appalachian Mountains? He would have told them, humorously of course, to go fuck themselves.

Stuff like this didn't happen in Boone, North Carolina. This was a tourist town. People came here to enjoy their families and friends in one of nature's most beautiful places. They didn't come here to get starved, beaten, and left to die in a box six feet under.

"Once we get him in the ambulance, I want a catheter placed, and a fluid line going immediately. This Vulcan is severely dehydrated," the man Higgins had assumed was the doctor barked to one of the EMT's as they all rushed the Vulcan across the clearing. Higgins' own team was already blocking the clearing off and marking it as a crime scene. He knew that within the hour, this little place in the woods would be crawling with three times as many officers, and probably on a federation level given the victim's heritage, along with forensic scientists.

"Yes, Dr. Staley," one of the female EMT's answered just as she adjusted the oxygen mask on the Vulcan's face. Errantly, Higgins wished they would wipe the blood away from his nose.

Higgins followed Dr. Staley, as he had been identified, and the team, and watched out of the side of his eyes as Emmett Clarington held his wife back from following them. He felt a pang of sympathy for her. She had helped find the Vulcan after all, and she probably wanted to make sure he was going to be okay, but there was nothing for it. This was a police matter now. She could visit him at the hospital later.

_After she's given her statement of course_, he thought. For there was no doubt about it now, he was going to need one from both of them.

"Dr. Staley, I need you to do a DNA test as soon as you can," Higgins chimed in when they had arrived at the ambulance; the team rushing to get the Vulcan inside so they could lift off to the hospital.

Dr. Staley let out a breath of annoyance as he came to move inside the ambulance with the medical team, who were already placing the catheter he'd ordered into the Vulcan's freakishly thin wrist. Higgins shuddered when he saw raw, chaffed marks around his wrist, which indicated he'd been tied up at some point.

"Look, detective? There are a lot of things I need to do _as soon as I can_ regarding this Vulcan, and fishing for identities is not one of them," the man stated dismissively, and began waving the tricorder over the Vulcan once again. Around him, the others were prepping gauze, cleaning wounds, and putting up fluid bags. One administered a hypospray into the Vulcan's neck, and turned around to grab another. So much it seemed needed to be done, but Higgins only cared about the doctor at the moment.

"Look, I need that test, Doctor. I need to know who this is because it could possibly help us name a suspect," Higgins paused when he realized that Dr. Staley was endeavoring to ignore him. He made his voice louder, and more serious. "A _suspect_ who is still at large. Someone did this to that man, and if his identity can help us find out whom, then it's a priority," he finished in an authoritative tone.

Dr. Staley paused his tricorder, which had been hovering over the Vulcan's chest, and considered something.

"Bradley? Get me a quick DNA analysis. Get it done as soon as you can. We need to be out of here like yesterday," Staley said a moment later to one of the women who had finally set to wiping the blood away from the Vulcan's nose. Dr. Staley spared Higgins a glance as if to say, _satisfied?_ and then resumed moving his tricorder up and down the Vulcan's body. He paused again though when he came to his lower half.

"Chitin?" Staley started in a disturbed voice.

Higgins stiffened. He knew that tone of voice, and it never lead to anything good.

"Comm the team waiting at the hospital, tell them they'll need to get a rape kit prepped. This Vulcan has been sexually assaulted."

The team all shared a pitying glance before nodding. The woman that had been given the order to perform the DNA test had just taken her blood sample, and was feeding it into a device.

Higgins inhaled sharply at Dr. Staley's medical observation, and fought the wave of rage that rose up within him. Not only had this Vulcan been beaten, starved, and buried alive, but he'd been raped on top of that. Who the fuck had done this? It bothered him immensely that somewhere out there at this very moment, there was a murdering rapist walking around, and possibly looking for his next victim.

"Doctor, is he going to be okay?" Higgins asked in barely suppressed anger as the horror of the situation washed over him. This had always been a problem for him as a detective. He wasn't able to detach himself as well as other detectives could, and because of that, he found himself getting way too emotionally invested in the victims he came across.

Dr. Staley pocketed his tricorder and turned to face him; his expression grim.

"Doctor, I've got your analysis…" Bradley sounded in a low voice, as if the results she'd found had shocked her.

However, Dr. Staley ignored her and answered Higgins' question. "I won't know that for sure until we get him back to the hospital. My equipment only goes so far out here. He's got a litany of injuries, and that's only what this tricorder has picked up. The dehydration alone could kill him. It's hard for a Vulcan to dehydrate, but once they do, it's even more deadly than for a human given their biology, so I won't be happy until that fluid bag is depleted. Once I get my hands on a more sophisticated tricorder back at the hospital, I'll be able to provide a more thorough diagnosis," he paused, and Higgins watched as his facial expressions became determined and stern. "But I can assure you, I will do everything to see that he doesn't die today."

Higgins nodded, and knew that was the best he could hope for. They weren't out of the dark yet, but at least the Vulcan had a confident doctor attending to him.

"Doctor," Bradley reiterated, this time with more insistence.

"Yes, Bradley, do you have the results for me?" Staley answered tiredly. Higgins could tell that he still didn't think the identity was a priority.

"Yeah, and you're not going to believe this…" Bradley answered in disbelief as she handed a PADD over to Staley. Higgins knew that PADD would have the Vulcan's identity on it.

Higgins and Dr. Staley shared a brief look at Bradley's awkward inflection before the doctor took the offered PADD. He glanced down at the screen, and his eyes instantly widened, which prompted Higgins to walk around hastily and look at the PADD for himself. It was then that his own eyes widened as well. For, the Vulcan they'd unearthed was not just any Vulcan. He was the supposedly _dead_ Commander Spock of Starfleet; the former First Officer of the most famous ship in the Fleet. The ship that was out there right now on the Federation border keeping the Klingons out of Federation Space.

The Vulcan they'd brought out of that box who'd been beaten, starved, raped, and left for dead was the same Vulcan who'd been supposedly abducted by the Orions while the Enterprise had been in the Gamma Quadrant three years ago. This was the _same _Vulcan who'd been supposedly sold into slavery, and then later killed by those same slavers. Everyone had known that story. _Everyone_.

In fact, that story had been the reason _why_ the Orion Syndicate was currently in ruins! Because the famous Captain Kirk had brought it burning to the ground after what had happened to his First Officer. That event in history had brought Captain Kirk great fame; a fame that Captain Kirk had never wanted. Higgins could remember every interview following that event. He could remember how haunted the Captain had looked whenever anyone brought it up, and then how quickly he would change the subject. Kirk had believed his First Officer to have been enslaved, and then murdered. They all had.

And yet…here Spock was, alive, and in Boone, North Carolina out of all places in the Universe, and there wasn't an Orion in sight.

_Holy. Shit, _he thought in disbelief.

If Higgins thought his life had gotten hard, he didn't realize how hard it was about to get.

**A.N. sooo? Does anyone feel a little better now that I got Spock out of that coffin? Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts, and whether you guys would still like to see this expanded? Also, I tend to create my OC's out of songs. Like, I'll hear a song and form a character given the mood of the song. The song that I used to create this serial killer who's had Spock for three years was inspired by the song, "Once Upon a Dream," the cover version by Lana Del Rey. The lyrics are perfect for the delusion that this killer is under where Spock is concerned. I mean, the song is haunting and has an obsessive quality to it. Anyone interested in listening can find it here: **** /8waJ7W3QcJc**

**I hope everyone enjoyed this! **


End file.
